THE REMAINS OF THE CIVIL WAR IN THE PYRENEES

The Pyrenees of Navarra offers beautiful landscapes, deep forests, and many routes and walks through the mountains. Few people are aware that these quiet landscapes were one of the key scenarios for military operations of a foreseeable invasion of Spain by the Allies during the Second World War. At that time, from 1939 to 1941, the Pyrenees were fortified with a barrier of bunkers (more than 10,000) and many roads were built to reach them, in a colossal work that, despite its size, remains almost completely unknown today. The summer camp seeks the recovery of an area of buildings, which served to accommodate the Republican prisoners who participated in the construction of the road that joins the different valleys in the Pyrenees. The works will be guided by qualified staff for the specific task of the camp: cleaning the weeds of the zone, the consolidation of one building, and the reconstruction of another one on wood. We will use few images that are conserved and the testimony of those prisoners. The road that joins the Pyrenean valleys of Roncal and Salazar was part of the Pyrenees plan in Franco´s time to stop an invasion. Our camp is an important work linked to the recovery of a part of the memory of the Spanish Civil War and Post-war period.